This is

Roman Mars.

It's 525 a.m. outside of the city hall in Peter Merrittsburg South Africa,

and Shaheeda Tungo is ready to go on a run.

She's wearing a white running.

She's wearing a white running skirt and knee socks, one pink, one blue, and she's cracking jokes.

Listen, I'm not there to run for the money, so I have to look good.

I choose my struggles. I can't be fast, so I must be cute.

The road around her is packed with other equally chipper runners,

adjusting the race numbers, snapping selfies, and dancing.

Altogether, there are about 13,000 people here,

and they're not getting ready for a 5K or a 10K or even a marathon.

This is the start line of the comrades, which is 56 miles long.

That's Ryan Lenora Brown, a reporter in South Africa who was there the morning of the race in August.

Most years, more than 15,000 people run the comrades, way more than run any other

ultra-marathon in the world.

For reference, about 25,000 people ran the last Boston marathon, but the comrades is more than twice as long.

And as a foreigner in South Africa, I've been haunted for a long time by a question, why the

hell do South Africans think running a race like this for fun is a normal thing to do.

Not only is it very, very long, the comrades goes to a part of South Africa whose name sounds

pretty ominous when you're doing two back-to-back

marathons through it.

...